Biden calls Boston bomb suspects 'knockoff jihadists'

In a photo provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a memorial service for fallen MIT police officer Sean Collier on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., Wednesday, April 24, 2013. Collier was fatally shot on campus Thursday, April 18, 2013. Authorities allege that the Boston Marathon bombing suspects were responsible. (AP Photo/Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dominick Reuter)

BOSTON -- Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday denounced the Chechen brothers accused of planting the Boston Marathon bombs as "two twisted, perverted, cowardly knockoff jihadists," even as investigators scrambled to find out more about the suspects, one living and one dead.

Speaking at an outdoor service for slain Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer Sean Collier, Biden explicitly connected the bombings and Collier's slaying to the U.S. war against terrorists worldwide. Preceded by a martial keen of bagpipes, Biden praised Collier as a "remarkable son (and) a remarkable brother," while his voice rose against those suspected of killing the 27-year-old officer.

"They know they can never defeat us," Biden said, adding that "it infuriates them that we refuse to bend, refuse to change, refuse to yield to fear."

Investigators believe Collier was gunned down in his police car around 10 p.m. Thursday by one of the two brothers three days after the marathon bombings.

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Federal prosecutors have charged Dzhokhar Tsarnaev with use of a weapon of mass destruction and destruction of private property with an explosive for the April 15 bombings in which three people died and more than 260 were injured. Both federal charges carry the potential for the death penalty or for life in prison.

Tsarnaev's 26-year-old brother Tamerlan died Friday after a late-night shootout in which, police say, 200 bullets were fired and several explosive devices were thrown.

Additional state charges relating to Collier's death and the wounding of Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority police officer Richard Donohue could come soon.

"We have an active investigation," Stephanie Chelf Guyotte, spokeswoman for Middlesex County District Attorney Marian T. Ryan, said in a telephone interview Wednesday, "and we do expect to file charges."

Massachusetts does not allow for the death penalty, and the state last executed a convicted criminal in 1947. A short-lived effort to reinstate the penalty failed Tuesday in the state House of Representatives, though in a roundabout way that let lawmakers avoid a politically difficult up-or-down vote.

Across the Charles River, in downtown Boston, Tsarnaev also could theoretically face additional state murder charges for the three individuals killed in the April 15 bombings. For now, though, the Suffolk County district attorney who handles Boston cases is letting federal prosecutors take the lead.

"We have a team of prosecutors in place, if there is some change," Jake Wark, spokesman for Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said in an interview Wednesday, "but the district attorney believes that the federal statutes give federal authorities appropriate jurisdiction."

Through a multi-agency Joint Terrorism Task Force, investigators have been continuing to track the Tsarnaev brothers' footprints worldwide.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Wednesday that "some personnel . . . headed down" from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to the Russian province of Dagestan, a largely Muslim region about 1,200 miles away, to talk to the parents of the Tsarnaev brothers.

In Washington, other investigators trekked to a secure underground Capitol Hill facility late Wednesday to brief members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on the latest findings.

The brothers appeared to live in very modest circumstances. They resided in a third-floor apartment in a shabby building in Cambridge, in a neighborhood dotted with upscale condominiums as well as auto repair and recycling facilities. Most of the windows in the apartment appeared blocked with cardboard, and a screen dangled from one window. Several neighbors said they believed the apartment was rent-subsidized.

The family and both brothers at one point received state public assistance, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Department of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday. The brothers, though, have not been receiving benefits this year, spokesman Alec Loftus said, confirming a report in Wednesday's Boston Herald.